cover image Waltercio Caldas

Waltercio Caldas

Blanton Museum of Art. Univ. of Texas and Blanton Museum of Art, $60 (168p) ISBN 978-0-292-75311-2

This exhibition catalogue for “The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas,” an exhibit at the Blanton Museum in Austin, Tex., through January 2014, features 40 years of the artist’s thought-provoking work, demonstrating his elegance, humor, originality, physicality, and quintessentially Brazilian post-modern aesthetic. Contributor Robert Storr sheds light on the difficulties of describing Caldas’s work, noting how he rejects “the narrowness and rigidity of neo-Duchampian anti-aestheticians” through “an exquisitely sensual, hyperaesthetic methodology for posing problems that have no answers, at least none that language can be solely entrusted to provide.” Caldas uses empty space and techniques, like adding unexpected materials (fur, talcum powder) to otherwise sleek constructions of wood, glass, and metal, to wryly challenge the viewer’s assumptions and perceptions. The curator of this exhibit, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, states, “It is hard to think of a contemporary artist whose work so doggedly and skillfully evades the verbal, the narrative, the descriptive, and thus defies the rules of an art system that demands easily digested and marketable products.” Jaded art lovers will find the calm beauty of this work acutely refreshing. 120 illus. (Oct.)